Paul Anthony Elliott Bew, Baron Bew (born 22 January 1950[1]),[2] is a British historian from Northern Ireland and a life peer. He has worked at Queen's University Belfast since 1979, and is currently Professor of Irish Politics, a position he has held since 1991.[2]
His first book, Land and the National Question in Ireland, 1858–82 was a revisionist study that challenged nationalist historiography by examining the clash between landowners and tenants as well as the conflict between large and small tenants. His third book, a short study of Charles Stewart Parnell published in 1980, challenged some of the arguments of the award-winning 1977 biography of Parnell by F. S. L. Lyons, though Lyons, one of the "doyens" of modern Irish history, acknowledged the younger historian's arguments by stating that "Nothing Dr Bew writes is without interest."[5] Bew's central thesis was that Parnell was a fundamentally conservative figure whose ultimate aim was to secure a continuing position of leadership for the Protestant gentry in a Home Rule Ireland.
In 2007, Oxford University Press published Bew's Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789–2006, which forms part of the Oxford History of Modern Europe series. The book received positive reviews.[5][6][7]
Bew was also involved in the Belfast Project, a Boston College initiative to record interviews with former participants in the Troubles, including former republican and loyalist paramilitaries.[9] In 2014, Gerry Adams criticised Bew's handling of the Boston College project, as well as the journalist Ed Moloney and the former IRA volunteer Anthony McIntyre.[9][10] Adams claimed Bew had deliberately chosen Moloney and McIntyre because they were unsympathetic to Adams.[9][10] Bew expressed regret over the closure of the project, and stated further oral history projects of the Troubles were now "under a cloud".[11]
Bew's political stance has changed over the years. In a 2004 interview for The Guardian, he stated that "While my language was more obviously leftwing in the 1970s than today, that sympathy has always been there".[2] As a young man, Bew participated in the People's Democracy marches. Bew was briefly a member of a group called the British and Irish Communist Organisation, which advocated the two nations theory of Northern Ireland.[12] Bew was also a member of the Workers' Party, then known as Official Sinn Féin.[13]
Bew is a unionist,[2] and in 2019 called for the British government to do more to champion the union and recommended introducing a Department of the Union.[14] He served as an "informal adviser" to David Trimble.[2] Trimble and Bew are both signatories to the statement of principles of the Henry Jackson Society,[15] which has been characterised as a neoconservative organisation.[16]
^ abRoy Foster (13 December 2007). "Partnership of loss". London Review of Books. Archived from the original on 16 February 2008. Retrieved 6 March 2008.
^Bew, Paul (2005). "The role of the historical adviser and the Bloody Sunday Tribunal". Historical Research. 78 (199): 113–127. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2281.2005.00240.x.
^ abcMcGarry, Patsy (6 May 2014). "Boston College says it will return interviews about the North". The Irish Times. Archived from the original on 20 May 2014. Retrieved 20 May 2014. Gerry Adams has welcomed the College's decision to hand back the tapes. "The Boston CollegeBelfast Project was flawed from the beginning." he said yesterday. "It was conceived by Lord Paul Bew, " he said. He proposed Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre despite the fact that both individuals were "extremely hostile" me and Sinn Fein, Mr Adams said
^O'Hara, Victoria (12 May 2014). "Boston College Troubles archive closure a loss to history". Belfast Telegraph. Archived from the original on 20 May 2014. Retrieved 20 May 2014. The prestige of Boston College will continue to grow but a project which had been designed as one of the jewels in the crown of a great library has gone. Other similar projects to use oral history as a means of dealing with the past in the Troubles are also, to say the least, under a cloud.
^Godson, Dean (2004). Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal of Unionism. New York: HarperCollins. p. 30.
^Hanley, Brian; Millar, Scott (2010). The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party. London: Penguin.
